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Security Awareness

Develop a strong security mindset with articles focused on security awareness principles, social engineering defense, safe browsing habits, password hygiene, and recognizing manipulation tactics used by attackers targeting human vulnerabilities.

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Incident Response

How to Respond to a Cyberattack: A Practical Guide

In July 2020, Garmin went dark. Their fitness trackers, aviation navigation tools, and customer support systems all went offline simultaneously. A ransomware attack attributed to the WastedLocker strain reportedly crippled the company for days. If you're wondering how to respond to a cyberattack, Garmin's very public

Carl B. Johnson Dec 20, 2020 7 min read
Zero Trust Network Access

Zero Trust Network Access: A Practical Guide for 2021

The SolarWinds Breach Just Proved Your Perimeter Is Dead As I write this in December 2020, we're watching one of the most devastating supply chain attacks in history unfold. The SolarWinds breach — disclosed just days ago — compromised U.S. government agencies and major corporations by exploiting trusted software

Carl B. Johnson Dec 12, 2020 7 min read
Zero Trust Implementation

Zero Trust Implementation: A Practical Guide for 2021

When Twitter disclosed in July 2020 that attackers had hijacked 130 high-profile accounts — including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Apple — the root cause wasn't some exotic zero-day exploit. It was social engineering. Attackers manipulated employees, gained access to internal tools, and moved laterally through systems that trusted them

Carl B. Johnson Dec 12, 2020 7 min read
Acceptable Use Policy

Acceptable Use Policy Cybersecurity: Your First Defense

The Policy Nobody Reads Until It's Too Late In 2023, a single employee at MGM Resorts called the help desk, and a threat actor used social engineering to gain access that led to a $100 million hit on operations. One phone call. No malware exploit. No zero-day vulnerability.

Carl B. Johnson Nov 08, 2020 6 min read
NIST Cybersecurity Framework

NIST Cybersecurity Framework: A Practical Guide for 2026

The Framework 87% of Organizations Claim to Follow — But Most Get Wrong When the Change Healthcare breach exposed the records of over 100 million people in 2024, investigators found something familiar: the organization had a cybersecurity program on paper. What it lacked was disciplined execution against a proven structure. That

Carl B. Johnson Nov 04, 2020 7 min read
Shadow IT Risks

Shadow IT Risks: The Hidden Threat Draining Your Budget

Your Employees Already Built a Second IT Department A marketing manager signs up for an AI writing tool using her corporate email. A sales rep stores client contracts in a personal Dropbox. An engineering team spins up an AWS instance without telling anyone. None of these people are malicious. Every

Carl B. Johnson Oct 27, 2020 7 min read
Shadow IT

What Is Shadow IT? The Hidden Risk Draining Your Budget

The Breach That Started With a Spreadsheet App In 2023, a midsize healthcare company discovered that an employee had been syncing patient records to an unauthorized cloud storage service for over eight months. The service had no encryption, no access controls, and no audit logging. By the time the security

Carl B. Johnson Oct 27, 2020 7 min read
Cyber Hygiene

Cyber Hygiene Definition: What It Really Means in 2026

A Single Reused Password Cost One Company Everything In 2021, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shut down fuel distribution across the U.S. East Coast. The entry point? A single compromised password on a legacy VPN account that lacked multi-factor authentication. That's not a sophisticated nation-state exploit. That&

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 6 min read
Cyber Hygiene Checklist

Cyber Hygiene Checklist: 12 Steps That Actually Work

In 2023, MGM Resorts lost an estimated $100 million after a threat actor called Scattered Spider social-engineered an IT help desk with a ten-minute phone call. No zero-day exploit. No nation-state tooling. Just sloppy basics. That breach — and hundreds like it every year — could have been prevented with a disciplined

Carl B. Johnson Sep 07, 2020 7 min read